


from the roots

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: ACCA13区監察課 | ACCA 13-ku Kansatsuka
Genre: M/M, Politics, Sexy Business Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 08:39:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13096452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: It was not surprising how quickly Grossular agreed that a coup was necessary, but it was disappointing that such a man would buy into the idea of an administrative monolith. He lacked inspiration, poetry.(A government could be poetry, Lilium was convinced.)





	from the roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naphyla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naphyla/gifts).



Lilium made a show of telling the other chiefs not to bother him during the holiday, claiming a cultural significance that it did not hold with the knowledge that none of them would check. It was coincidental that a national long weekend fell in line with Furawau’s flower festival. He could make it to his villa and back without fear of a flight delay keeping him from work.

It was one of the many conveniences he could take for granted in the future, not that arranging his days off was a particularly lofty goal. But there was Chief Officer Grossular’s fault, not in any of the finer points they’d argued on in public. He’d see a holiday in Hare cleared from the calendar before it could be a problem for Yakkara. Farewell, flower viewing, and with it the colors of traditional dress, spices forgotten in every district but one, regional dialects that might confuse interstate relations.

It was not surprising how quickly Grossular agreed that a coup was necessary, but it was disappointing that such a man would buy into the idea of an administrative monolith. He lacked inspiration, poetry.

(A government could be poetry, Lilium was convinced. Look at the elegant competence of him and his brothers and imagine that a patchwork bureaucracy and moth-eaten monarchy could work so well.)

But Grossular, for all the depths to which he could be moved by a soft smile or an earnest story, was prosaic. He skimmed a newspaper — no, pored over it, Lilium corrected himself, for the man never skimmed anything — even while the breeze carried in the full perfume of the flowers outside. It was a windy night, and the wine and the heavy scent pushing in were enough to make Lilium lose himself for a moment, caught in watching the curtains flutter, until —

“Strange,” Grossular said, “that these workers’ strikes haven’t made national news yet. It seems they’ve been going on for some time.”

Not so strange if you had the connections and motivation Lilium’s elder brother had, but he put on an expression of consternation. “Would the citizens of the capital care about Furawau’s workers, even if they knew? Everyone seems so content to turn a blind eye to their neighbors’ struggles.”

A person could accuse Lilium of ambition. They would, surely, if they had access to the sort of documents he shared with neither superior nor secretary. But not of lack of conviction. Sophistry was easy, but he could ensure that one day, every one of his beautiful words would be supported in law. The fool prince and dotard king could not see beyond their own palace; next to that, what was Lilium’s selfishness?

If Grossular was stirred, he didn’t show it. His eyes did not move from the paper. Fair; he'd heard Lilium's rhetoric often enough. “Are Furawau’s laborers really so unhappy?”

“The work they do is completely out of proportion to our district’s income. Of course they’re unhappy. You see yet another reason our work is necessary,” said Lilium, impatience beginning to creep into his words. He had not called Grossular out so far (and so surreptitiously — there were times their public enmity became an inconvenience) to discuss page three stories in local newspapers. He crossed the expansive room with brisk steps to sit beside the other man. Gently, he closed the paper and tugged it from his hands, laying it folded back upon the glass-topped table.

“Have you ever tried gardening, Chief Officer?” Lilium asked. He poured another glass of wine, this one for the other man. It was sweet, too sweet for many tastes, but had long been a favorite of his.

Even sitting so far from the arching row of windows, Grossular’s hair was stirred by the breeze. “Rokkusu is too dry for it.”

Furawau was dry too, heat turning to blistering on many afternoons, but at least it was fertile. “Lately, of course, I haven’t had the time to maintain it, but I used to keep a plot of my own in a courtyard. If you’ve never done it, you wouldn’t understand how relaxing weeding can be. And how important.”

That was true, incidentally. As a child, he’d begged from the groundskeeper a little space for himself. He’d been taught in school about invasive species, about the thorny weeds that should never have reached Furawau, and spent the afternoon ripping them from his corner of the courtyard. Never mind his bleeding hands, never mind the scolding they incurred from his mother. He’d flung the pile, roots, blood, and all, in the groundskeeper’s wheelbarrow and grinned.

Grossular had a face like marble — it was probably why, aside from an intermittently sharp mind, he had made it in politics. Now, a flicker of a smile barely twitched past his lips. “And my metaphors are heavy-handed.”

The snideness was so unexpected that Lilium nearly laughed. He always wanted to seize on the moments when the chief officer behaved in a way something like a normal person. He knew how to handle normal people. (That was why _he_ had made it in politics. Everyone he’d ever met, even the oddballs like Grossular, were more or less the same, and he knew the things they wanted.)

“This isn’t about weeding out dissidents or pruning a way to a more beautiful future,” Lilium said. Or it was, in its way, as their entire sordid alliance was. There were others he could keep for better company, although maybe no one with the same strange and useful mixture of revolutionary ideals and a pliant nature. “It’s about maintaining hobbies.”

For a moment, Grossular seemed to stare straight through him, and Lilium lifted a hand to knot fingers through his long hair and tug. The other man bobbed a nod, even against the resistance as Lilium pulled, and moved as he was guided, mouth to Lilium’s throat.

Easy, he thought. Things had always been easy for Lilium, and people too, even the most remote. How satisfying to have the road paved so far before him.


End file.
